Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Bright Carvers

Monday, Sept. 15, 2008
10:00 p.m.
In the G0rmenghast trilogy by Mervyn Pe@ke, an ethnic community lives outside the castle walls called the Bright Carvers. They get their name from the beautiful artworks they create, to which a whole hall of the castle is dedicated. The scene is actually quite amusing, as the curator of the gallery is armed with a feather duster and it is his job to ensure that the carvings are clean and dustfree at all times. However, the floor itself is never swept and he wades through ankle-deep drifts of dust performing his duty of flicking his feathers over the artworks.

The Bright Carvers themselves are characterized by the beauty of their children and young people. Up until their early 20’s, they are extraordinarily beautiful, after which time their looks fade very quickly and they become quite plain, if not downright ugly. The carvings they produce retain the beauty that they themselves lose as they mature. The crown prince Titus Gr0an’s wet nurse was taken from their citizenry, a young woman who had recently lost a baby whose own beauty was still evident although it was fading quickly.

Today I drove to Costco through the backroads, a route which takes me cross-country through fields and woodlots, past a gravel pit and an orchard. Coming over the rise at the gravel pit I get a panoramic view of the city of Sh’brooke and Mount Orf0rd beyond, the mountain range that looms up from an otherwise flat-seeming plain. While some trees have already started changing colour, the known early-birds, today it was evident that the rest are now doing so in earnest. Green is still the predominant hue, but it is compromised more and more by splotches of red and yellow, and areas of imminent change.

For some reason Peake’s Bright Carvers came to mind, the last blaze of brilliant beauty before the onslaught of age and declining good looks of youth paralleled with the scarlets and golds of the leaves as the trees prepare for winter dormancy. This fall, more than any other, I am feeling the passing of summer into autumn. I suppose it means I should be working on some bright carvings of my own.



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